


Duality

by White Aster (white_aster)



Category: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner
Genre: Community: yaoi_challenge, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-24
Updated: 2007-04-24
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:28:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/white_aster/pseuds/White%20Aster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(SPOILERS for the premise of Episode 9, but none for the larger plot.)</p><p>Raidou and Raido talk shop. And then don't talk at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duality

Raidou bowed to the Herald, not liking in the least how his head swam as he did it. The shrine was always shadowy, but he had the suspicion that the black veil hung at the corner of his vision was plain old fatigue. He kept his steps steady, though, as he walked down the shrine path. He had no time to cater to exhaustion. Perhaps Viktor...if there WAS a Viktor in this world...would have something to help him. Or someplace he could take a nap. Not a long one. Just a few hours.... Time was precious, but he wouldn't be able to go on much longer like this, and by the way Gouto was starting to look at him concernedly, Raidou was rather sure that even the cat wouldn't begrudge him a nap after the day they'd had.

Besides. The ground was starting to look very far away and yet very, very comfortable.

In that state, the sight of himself leaning against the well was jarring and dream-like at the same time. This Raido was not him. Raidou could see the difference, and it was in more than just the scar cutting across his face. It was in the ready set of his shoulders, the hardness of his eyes. Or perhaps it was merely that Raidou had never been in a position to see himself sizing someone up before. Perhaps he got that cold, calculating expression, too.

Gouto's double, however, looked so much the same that Raidou wouldn't have been sure who was whom if he wasn't certain that Gouto hadn't left his side since they'd been dumped in Tsukudo-Cho. The resemblance was only reinforced when the two cats said at the same time, "You look like hell, kid."

Gouto's ears went down, eyes narrowing in feline displeasure at his double as he continued. "You should catch forty winks, Raidou. You've been up for almost 24 hours. Probably not a good idea to get too messed up with the folks here, but if there's a Narumi here, he should be used to this sort of thing. Maybe we should swing by the office--"

"Narumi is hiding from his landlady," Raido interrupted, unfolding from his stance to move onto the path. As he got closer, Raidou felt the world shift a little bit more, and he was rather sure that it wasn't because of fatigue. They were two people...the same person...who were not supposed to be sharing the same time and space. Raido could almost feel the fabric of reality bending around them, as if it were unsure whether it should be pushing them apart or pulling them together.

Raidou blinked when he registered what his double had said. "Hiding...ah." Narumi had been muttering for the last week about having to be nice to the landlady because he was behind again. Odd that the worlds were so closely linked. In some ways, at least. It made Raidou wonder what else was the same...and what else was different.

He had to admit that he wondered where Raido had gotten the scar.

Raido nodded. "Some things don't change, I see."

Raidou shook his head.

Raido's lips curved into a smile, sharper, somehow, than Raidou's own. "Come on, then. I've got a couch." He headed towards the streetcar station. "Of course, you probably already know that."

\-------------------

Raido's apartment was the same as Raidou's...mostly. There were differences, of the subtle kind that left Raidou with the persistent, nagging feeling that something was not quite right. Raido's cape and hat hung on hooks to the wrong side of the door. His katana rested on the wrong wall. The couch was upholstered in a different fabric. This, of course, did not keep Raidou from falling asleep on said couch nearly the second that he sat down on it. He woke sometime after sundown (out of a confused dream of shifting, swirling darkness and cracked mirrors) unsure of exactly where he was. The lamp was on the wrong side of the room, Gouto was nowhere to be found, and a voice that might have been the news was crackling from the wrong corner.

Then his own face peered around the corner, and Raidou remembered, rubbing his eyes as he asked what time it was.

"A little after eight," Raido responded, disappearing back into the tiny kitchen and emerging with hot tea and cold rice balls on a plate, both of which he thrust unceremoniously into Raidou's hands. "Here, eat."

The rice balls were lumpy (as Raidou's always were) and the tea a bit more floral than what Raidou would usually have in the house, but he made short work of the food while Raido sat in his chair, sipping from a familiar cup. Sucking the last grain of rice off his fingers, Raidou's eyes traveled to the window. "I should go."

"You could. Or you could get an actual night's sleep and another meal under your belt and tackle it tomorrow." Raido's lips twisted in that smirk that was wholly his own, his head tilting as he peered at Raidou's face. "I know that look. That's the 'damn, I still need another 12 hours of sleep' look. I see it in the mirror all the time." He shrugged. "The prisms'll still be there tomorrow, and you're in no shape to take on their guardians right now." Raido's eyes followed Raidou's out the window. "Besides. The demons are worse at night. It'll be more of a hassle to get to the Shrine again tonight than tomorrow morning."

Raidou frowned. "Worse at night?"

Raido looked over at him, surprised. "Of course. With the Fourth Nether Gate open, the demons can draw more power from the dark...that isn't true in your world?"

Raidou shook his head. "Only the Second and Third Gates are open. Have been for centuries."

"Huh. Here, the Fourth Gate's guardian fell...oh, ten years ago. The family's been working on closing it again, but it's taking some time. Until that's done, yeah...." His mouth quirked. "Things are a bit more dangerous than is strictly healthy here."

Well. That would explain a few things. With the Fourth Nether Gate open, more powerful demons would be crossing over into this world, and they would be able to draw more power from darkness and the darker emotions. It would make Raidou...or Raido Kuzunoha's job that much more dangerous and difficult.

Raidou prided himself on his prowess, but even in the few encounters they'd had on their way to Raido's apartment had shown that he was slower than Raidou but strong, dispatching his enemies with a brutal, merciless efficiency that spoke of more bitter and perhaps just more experience than Raidou could lay claim to. He was a bit surprised when Raido asked the question that was in the back of his own mind.

"When did you take the Raidou name?" Raido sounded curious.

"Last year."

One eyebrow quirked in surprise. "...really. Huh."

"...what?"

Raido shrugged. "You seem...different. I couldn't tell if it was just some difference in us or what. I've been Raido since I was fourteen."

Raidou nearly inhaled his tea. "Fourteen? How did...the main family didn't even look at me until I was fourteen. You started training when you were...."

Raido folded his hands over his stomach. "Eleven, yep. The summoning part. They waited until later for the martial skills."

"That's...is that common here?"

"Not really." Raido shrugged. "I was a bit of a special case. We both are, I'd expect. Might be that here, with the extra Gate open, it just bit me faster." Raido ran his thumb down the scar crossing his face. "When I was eleven I woke up one night with a turdak trying to carve my face off. I think he could tell I had the gift and wasn't too keen on letting one more summoner live."

Raidou just stared at him. The demons wouldn't...the house wards would have...it just couldn't have, hadn't happened in the world Raidou knew. "And then?"

"I couldn't fight him, and I of course didn't have any tubes, but I found the will somewhere. I couldn't really overpower him, but I screamed like hell and slowed him down enough to keep him from killing me before help came."

Raidou shook his head, sipping at his tea. "I can't imagine."

That wry smirk again. "It wasn't one of our most shining moments, I can tell you that. Though everyone was impressed. After I got out of the hospital, the family shoved me into training so fast my head spun."

Raidou couldn't imagine that either, going into the grueling summoner training so young, and he opened his mouth to say so, but then, suddenly, he could. Not just in the way he'd originally meant, but as if he were remembering it, in flashes that were almost painful: the hazy image of a turdak's grinning skull and its blade dragging across his nose, long boring days of being in the hospital and then the horror as he saw the red ruin of his face, only slightly assuaged when the family elders came to tell him that he was special, he'd been chosen, he should be honored....

Raidou shook his head. The memories weren't his, though they seemed to want to be. He felt that curious pushing-pulling sensation again, and knew that his double felt it too, by the sharp intake of breath across from him.

"Well. That's new." Raido was on his feet, tense like he was ready for a fight, his eyes going reflexively to the wards over the windows. Nothing had changed, though, and he shook the tension out of his shoulders as he turned back. He reached out, his hand coming down on Raidou's shoulder and staying there, as if testing the contact. "I can't tell whether I should get closer to you or further away. Is it dangerous, you think?"

The touch was at once better and worse. Worse, in that the contact sent an almost electric prickle down Raidou's spine, but it wasn't painful, only odd, and the strange blurring of memories didn't happen again. "I don't know. Maybe." It was better, though, because that close he felt more at ease with Raido. As if Raido had disappeared. As if every barrier Raidou possessed didn't even register him. As if Raido wasn't a stranger at all.

Which, Raidou realized, as he looked up into his own eyes, only made sense.

Raido leaned down, resting his forehead against Raidou's and it didn't feel like an invasion of personal space at all. It felt warm, comfortable, like holding his own hand. "Nice," Raido murmured, obviously agreeing.

With a boldness that they never would have dared with anyone else, they reached out, hands sliding curiously, gently, over faces, hair, shoulders, searching out similarities and differences. The breadth of shoulders a bit wider here, and a pinky finger obviously broken there. That led to a comparison of scars, fingers chasing them through the open neck and sleeves of shirts. They bared each other's skin as simply as one would take off one's own clothes. The pattern of their scars, they realized, was very different, and one of them almost flinched at the white, translucent web of scar tissue across chest, sides, back. So many battles indelibly carved in flesh. One of them just laughed, hands splayed over the other's chest, amused rather than jealous and enjoying the feel of smooth skin.

The touching, of course, had a predictable effect. They looked at each other, duality intruding for only a moment before receding again. One of them jerked his head towards the bedroom and the other nodded.

It was easy and simple in a way that nothing was easy or simple for them. Stripping down and stretching out on the bed was nothing new, and there were the same cocks and the same hands with the same sword calluses as usual. It was even easy to turn toward each other, hands wandering to experiment with touching and being touched. It was more exciting than they expected, having another pair of hands do this to them, and the full implication of having two bodies to work with hit them at the same time. The same idea, the same almost-guilty fantasy. Something they would never admit to anyone else but found creeping into their dreams, every now and then, in the dark of night.

One of them raised an eyebrow. _We want to?_

One of them nodded, breath coming faster. _We want to._

They ran into the slight problem of what to use for lubricant. One had as much experience with this as the other (which was to say, none), but it didn't take experience to figure that this would require something slick. A whirlwind search ended with a bottle of sesame oil from the kitchen, and who got to go first was decided by who ended up in the most comfortable position when they fell back into bed.

It was clumsy and messy, but there was no awkward communication obstacles between them, either. Understanding and an instinctive empathy made it easy as breathing to give direction to what felt good and warn against what didn't. They were, perhaps, the best lover either could have asked for, greedy and considerate at the same time, and when one slid into the other, they froze for one long, crystalline moment at the strangeness, the air tightening around them in a spasm before relaxing again. One joked that they must be confusing the hell out of the universe, and the edge of fear, that they might actually do something to make them merge gave an extra thrill as they started to move. They found a rhythm that had them both breathing hard, one bent over the other, whispering in each other's ears what it felt like, yes and more and harder, slower, faster?, yes, and when one came in dizzying, almost-shared ecstasy, they just laughed and rolled and started all over again, the other taking his turn and making it good and then more than good and then even better.

They drew it out, not wanting it to end, changing position and using every bit of self-knowledge and half-remembered fantasy to bring them both off again. And only when they collapsed in a sticky, sated, exhausted pile did they allow sleep to claim them.

Raidou woke with the dawn, surprisingly refreshed and alone in bed. He stretched and stood and was just moving rather more carefully than usual over to the washbasin when Raido walked in, the smell of tea and cooking following him.

Raido reclaimed the sesame oil bottle from the floor, and they both grinned sheepishly.

Raido wiggled the bottle. "I still say it counts as masturbation. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it." He headed back towards the kitchen, calling over his shoulder, "Breakfast in ten."

Through the open door, Raidou could see Gouto, frozen with one paw in the air in the act of padding towards the bedroom. Gouto turned his head to look at one Kuzunoha, then the other, blinking. Then, he circled right around and headed back into the living room. "Nevermind. I don't want to know."

From the kitchen, Raido chuckled. Raidou coughed and reached for the washcloth.

~End


End file.
